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Scambaiting

By aardvarchaeology on May 11, 2007.

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Dear Reader, you have certainly received Nigerian scam e-mail more than once.

"It is obvious that this proposal will come to you as a surprise. This is because we have not met before but I am inspired to sending you this email by the huge fund transfer opportunity that will be of mutual benefit to the two of us.

However, I am Barrister Martins jide, the personal attorney to the late Engr. Suk Hun Wufei flody, a Citizen of Japan, who used to work with Nigerian National Petrolum Co-operatrion (NNPC)."

But have you heard of scambaiting? It's a popular pastime where internet users, protected by anonymous e-mail accounts, reply to scammers and lead them on long weird correspondences that are then published. The finest trophy of all is when a scambaiter manages to entice a scammer to send them his picture, usually where he is holding up a stipulated sign or object to prove that the image is not just stock footage. One celebrated scambaiter even managed to get a scammer to record and send him a re-enactment of Monty Python's dead parrot sketch, ostensibly to allow the scambaiter to give the scammer a large film-making scholarship.

Check out 419eater.com for endless laughs at the crooks' expense!

Tags
humour

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I am not sure if this stuff is funny or not. I used to, but then I started to think: Sure, scammers are assholes who should be nailed, but these people are also poor as hell. And convincing a guy that he is about to get a movie grant if he wastes his time for 2 weeks...well, I just don't know. Also, when they get the guys to make an object and send it over, I just know that it was some younger relative who was forced to make this stupid object for little or no money.

So scammers are evil, but having a laugh at poor people in this way is not so much better. I think...

I know what you mean. Any decent rich white person must feel a little hesitant to laugh at poor black people, whatever the cause.

But my feeling is that we're not laughing at all Nigerians, and we're not laughing at the scammers because they're black. We're laughing at irritating spammers and scammers getting their come-uppance. If the scammers were based in Lithuania and as pale-skinned as ourselves, then scambaiting would still be really fun.